The predecessor of the CNI, the Directorate of National Intelligence (DINA), had been dissolved due to pressure from the United States government as a result of the assassination of Orlando Letelier in exile in Washington in 1977.
[2][3] The CNI was a "military body, a member of the National Defense," which gave it independence in its actions; however, its relationship with the government was through the Ministry of the Interior.
The CNI was responsible for numerous cases of repression, political infiltration, assassinations, kidnapping and torture of people, including the murder of the union leader Tucapel Jiménez, the carpenter Juan Alegría Mundaca, and the so-called Operation Albania.
[5] The CNI was also responsible for the assassinations of various former members of the Revolutionary Left Movement (Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria, MIR) during the 1980s, in which they used the tactic of "false confrontations."
They are also related to the robbery of banks, drug trafficking and illegal weapons, and the fraud called "La Cutufa", which involved one of Augusto Pinochet's sons.